Vampirism and the Graphic Novel

The vampire is the stuff of nightmares: the monster so human and yet so monstrous. Predatory, deviant and sexual, transgressing the moral codes of humanity, the vampire is at once deeply arcane and yet thrillingly contemporary. So familiar to us visually, through countless films and even fashion and style iconography, the first steps into the visual image will mark the beginning of this essay. Starting with the earliest images of vampires in the form of engravings accompanying nineteenth-century popular fiction works such as Rymer’s Varney the Vampire and the tentative attempts to illustrate Stoker’s Dracula, this essay will look at the ‘visualised’ vampire through languages of aesthetic composition and symbolism. The essay will proceed to consider the ‘post-cinematic’ realization of vampires: in US pre-code horror comics of the 1950s and long-running series such as Tomb of Dracula in the 1970s, the shadow of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee’s Draculas haunt the pen and ink on the page, but that is not to say that these works are limited in ambition and reinvention. The essay will conclude with some key examples of the postmodern comic vampire as is to be found in Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night and also his I Am Legend graphic novel adaptation. The essay will also consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its post-TV incarnation which has seen full series in comic form continuing after the TV show was axed.